York Music Psychology Group

A sucessful afternoon at the Festival of Ideas for the YMPG

YMPG were lucky enough to take part in the 2017 FestIval of ideas, as run by the University of York. One of their flagship events was the ‘family fun afternoon’ held in the Ron Cook Hub. One of our members, Lottie Brook, devised a series of activities for children to introduce them to the idea of emotion evoking music. This is her summery of the event:

This weekend YMPG were in charge of a stall at the Family Fringe Afternoon as part of the Festival of Ideas. We had a range of activities to take part in, including percussion activities and the firm favourite: emoji charts!

The activities were aimed at 5-11 year olds, trying to get them to engage with the topic of music and emotion. This was expressed by many impressive dance moves, singing and of course picking out the relevant emoji stickers!

We had some great feedback from the children and parents (see below) and we are delighted that 70 sticker charts were completed and taken home!

A huge thanks to all the YMPG members for their incredible enthusiasm throughout the day! After the activity had been completed the children and parents wrote either a reflection about music and its effect on us or feedback about the activity, on our ‘thoughts’ board. Here are some of those comments:

‘Brilliant activity – enthusiastic students!’

‘Very engaging!’

‘Fun and thought provoking’

‘Me and my friend had loads of fun 10/10’

‘Music makes you happy and sad’

‘I LOVE SONGS’

‘I liked the music because it was happy’

The songs had mixed emotions’

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Music, Science and Technology Research Cluster
Department of Music
University of York
Heslington
York